This is the first major solo exhibition of Stan Douglas' work in Ireland. Presented in collaboration with Haus der Kunst in Munich and Museé Carré d’art de Nîmes; as well as Wiels in Brussels, Museu Berardo in Lisbon, Nicolaj Konsthall in Copenhagen, and The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, the exhibition focuses on Douglas’s recent photography, including the critically acclaimed series, Malabar People, Mid Century Studio and Disco Angola.

The exhibition will include his major new film work Luanda Kinshasa (2013). Set in a reconstruction of the legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio, which was based in Midtown Manhattan and home to some of the most renowned musical recordings of the twentieth century, this film is the documentation of a fictitious recording at the famed studio. It tells the story of a studio recording Miles Davis might have made following the release of his album "On the Corner" in 1972. "Miles Davis wanted to connect with a younger audience, and naïvely imagined that incorporating influences of Indian classical music and Karlheinz Stockhausen into extended funk improvisations would do the trick. However, Columbia Records decided to market to an older 'jazz' audience and 'On the Corner' was Miles's worst-selling album ever."

Luanda-Kinshasa expands Douglas’s interest in the African origins of the music scene in New York in the early 1970s. Similar to many of Douglas’s previous films, which have involved arbitrary loops that at times take days to unfold, combining and recombining edits to allow for musical variations. The emphasis is on the compositional process itself, rather than a finished composition.

This exhibition, in presenting both photographs as well as recent film work, reveals Stan Douglas at an exceptional moment in his artistic career. In these works, Douglas has closely interwoven music, film, theatre, photography, and digital formats, allowing them simultaneously to be associated with various forms of media, and together they provide both a rich introduction to an artist whose investigations into mistaken identity and unstable memory, reconstruction, reinvention and the long shadows the past cast into the present, make him one of the most interesting and important artists of our time. Curated by Seamus Kealy.

Talks and Events

IFI + IMMA Presents Screenings and Discussion with Stan DouglasWednesday 3 June 2015, 6.00 – 8.00pmIrish Film Institute, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2A screening of Film (26mins) by Samuel Beckett, and Vidéo (18 mins) by Canadian artist Stan Douglas, that pays homage to Beckett’s film. A discussion follows between Stan Douglas and Walter Asmus (German Theatre/ Film Director and collaborator with Samuel Beckett), moderated by Seamus Kealy. This event is in collaboration between the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Irish Film Institute on the occasion of the exhibition Stan Douglas: Mise en Scène. Listen to the recording of this event on Soundcloud

Lunchtime Gallery TalkFriday 17 July 2015, 1.15 - 2.00pm, West Wing Galleries, IMMASean Kissane introduces a selection of works in the context of Douglas’ photography and film practice.

Critical Response with Laura RascaroliWednesday 22 July 2015, 6.00 - 7.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMADr. Laura Rascaroli (Lecturer, UCC) discusses her research interests on film theory, spatiality and geopolitics in response to a choice of works selected from the exhibition Stan Douglas Mise-en-Scène at IMMA.

Lunchtime Lecture with Derval Tubirdy"The unthought and the harrowing: Samuel Beckett’s Necessary Art"Wednesday 12 August 2015, 1.00 - 2.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA In association with the TCD Samuel Beckett Summer School, Derval Tubirdy explores the intersections between Beckett’s writing and the visual arts and poses questions that are key to Beckett’s prose, poetry and performance which underpin significant moments in contemporary art. Derval Tubridy is Dean of the Graduate School, Associate Pro-Warden for Research and Enterprise, and Senior Lecturer in Literature and Visual Culture Goldsmiths, University of London. This talk draws on the IMMA exhibition by Stan Douglas and the presentation of Sam Jury’s All Things Being Equal in the Project Spaces. Book here